In the past, marketing has been lumped together with one-track-mind techniques. Some companies employ marketing tactics that only focus on one aspect of the business.

The problem with this is that there’s no aspect of your business that doesn’t contribute to your overall brand perception. Everything from your logo to your mission statement to how you handle customer complaints communicates how valuable your company is in the general marketplace.

In some marketing circles, there’s a lot of effort poured into making this concept a buzzword. In fact, some call this concept holistic marketing. In reality, taking a look at the entirety of your business to see how it’s perceived in the general marketplace is simply smart marketing.

Look Outside the Visual Elements of Your Brand

The temptation to focus on the visual elements of your company’s brand is overwhelming at times, especially considering the fact that the average consumer processes most things visually. On one level this makes sense. Your logo, website and other visual elements directly impact a potential customer’s visual perception of the brand. To be clear, the visual elements of your brand are extremely important, but this isn’t the whole picture. If you’re reading this now and you’ve spent thousands of dollars developing the visual elements of your brand without crafting a value statement for your company, it’s time to take a step back and go back to the drawing board. You’d be doing yourself a terrible disservice if you started to believe that customers can’t see through inconsistent branding. Studies show that today’s consumers are more savvy than they ever were. This means they aren’t easily deceived or tricked.

Establish Your Values Early On

Your company’s values are among your most important assets. What your company places its emphasis on will trickle throughout every aspect of your business. Before you find someone to design your corporate logo, before you design a web page, before you write a single word of sales copy, you’ll need to spend some serious time crafting your value statement. In other words, what message is at the core of all things related to your company? What are you really selling?

Think of some of today’s top brands and then think about what their products are really selling. For instance, on the surface Apple may sell slick computer products, but what they’re really selling is a chance for all people, young and old, to be the hippest people on the planet. These values are unquestionable and leak into every aspect of their brand. Everything from their logo to their sales copy is drenched in ultra-hip language reserved for their target market.

Call it holistic marketing or whatever makes sense to you, the bottom line is that you need to figure out what’s at the core of your product. Are you a plumber? If so, you’re selling services that protect valuable assets. Values not only communicate what your company is about, but it determines your clientele right out of the gate. Don’t underestimate the power of smart marketing.